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U.S. names 55 Gitmo prisoners cleared to go

The U.S. Government has for the first time issued a public list of Guantanamo prisoners cleared for release or transfer, but who remain at the island prison because of difficulties finding a country willing to take them or because of concerns about sending them to their home countries.

The list (posted here) was filed in a series of federal court cases Friday morning and includes the names and serial numbers of 55 detainees. That's almost exactly one-third of the 167 men currently imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

Since 2009, the U.S. Government has kept under wraps the list of detainees approved for release. In a court filing back then (posted here), the State Department's envoy for Guantanamo, Ambassador Daniel Fried, cited a need to coordinate diplomatic efforts to resettle the war-on-terror prisoners.

However, in the new court filings Friday, Justice Department lawyers said that need no longer merited keeping the list secret. They didn't quite concede that the resettlement process has stalled, but that was the implication. Congress has also greatly complicated releases from Guantanamo with a series of legislative measures attached to budget bills that Obama signed into law.

"In the over two years since the [Guantanamo Bay Review] Task Force completed its status reviews, circumstances have changed such that the decisions by the Task Force approving detainees for transfer no longer warrant protection," the DOJ lawyers wrote in their notice to the court (posted here).

"The efforts of the United States to resettle Guantanamo detainees have largely been successful – they have resulted in 40 detainees being resettled in third countries because of treatment or other concerns in their countries of origin since 2009. In addition, 28 detainees have been repatriated to their countries of origin since 2009. Consequently, the diplomatic and national security harms identified [by Fried in a 2009 court filing] are no longer as acute. In Respondents’ view, there is no longer a need to withhold from the public the status of detainees who have been approved for transfer."

It's unclear whether the list was ever officially classified, but it was designated as "protected" by the U.S. Government—a designation in Guantanamo cases that effectively keeps certain court records from the public.

A note on the list indicates that more than 55 detainees may actually be cleared for release, but the status of any additional prisoners ordered released has been placed under seal by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

UPDATE: Two civil liberties groups have issued statements reacting to the list's disclosure.

"These men have been cleared for release for at least three years (longer in many cases), and yet they have been held at Guantanamo now for eleven years and counting. It's unconscionable that so few of these cleared men have been released by this administration over the last three years," said Shane Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "The list is clearly incomplete, and based on the total numbers seems to not include the Yemenis cleared for conditional release. Moreover, the government notes in its brief that for a number of cleared men it still needs to seek formal court approval to release their names. That should not be a problem but will take time, and people reading the list should know that some cleared men are not listed only because of this legal technicality."

“Today’s release is a partial victory for transparency, and it should also be a spur to action,” said Zachary Katznelson of the American Civil Liberties Union. “These men have now spent three years in prison since our military and intelligence agencies all agreed they should be released. Not on the list, of course, is Adnan Latif, who died in his cell earlier this month despite having been repeatedly approved for release from Guantánamo. It is well past time to release and resettle these unfairly imprisoned men.”

CORRECTION (Friday, 9:21 P.M.): This post has been corrected to clarify the reasons Obama gave for suspending transfers to Yemen in 2010.